


Monument

by jayfiend



Category: Hit the Floor (TV)
Genre: Angst, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-05
Updated: 2016-03-14
Packaged: 2018-05-24 20:15:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 6,727
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6165421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/jayfiend/pseuds/jayfiend
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Just because Zero said he'd tell Jude about his past didn't mean he'd actually do it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place after episode 6 "Carrying". Depending on what happens next episode I may write more.

Even though Zero said he was going to take me to his old house and tell me about his past it didn’t mean he wasn’t going to put it off for as long as he could. Any day we could have gone he either had a surprise practice or had to meet with his publicist to work out endorsement deals. I had been expecting it. After all how long had it taken for him to tell me his real name? And he’d only told me his first name, not the last. I wondered how long I’d have to wait for that piece.

When I got to work my inbox was full of emails with interview questions. I didn’t look at them very closely before I deleted them all. The first few days after this had all come out I had and regretted it. Mixed in with all of the supportive messages were people who wondered if this was all a sham. A few of them even asked how much he’d paid me to help him act out his latest identity crisis. I’d tried to tell Zero about it a few times but he laughed it off. He was content to let everyone think what they wanted.

Instead of working I looked up the address of his childhood house online, half expecting it to turn out to be nothing like what he’d described. What I found was a house pretty much like any other. It was a brick ranch style house with a chain link fence surrounding it. There was a tree in the front yard. No one was living there now. The whole neighborhood was due to be demolished to make way for condos. Whatever had happened to Zero there wasn’t apparent just from looking at it.

I closed the window and turned off my computer. If I’d really wanted to I could have done a lot more research into who owned the house and what had happened to the people who lived there. I was sure that his biographer had dug all of that up already, he had only been waiting for Zero to confirm it. But Zero had said he would tell me himself. Going behind his back felt like betraying him somehow.

I could understand wanting to have secrets and keep certain things private. I still hadn’t told Zero why I’d left his party early. Even though he knew more about my relationship with Oscar than anyone else it didn’t mean I wanted to tell him what had happened. Yet again my dad had disappointed me. Yet again someone who was supposed to care about me came up short. As far as Zero knew I’d already cut ties with him. I was tired of talking about the many ways Oscar had disappointed me. Now Oscar was out of my life and I could move on. I didn’t want to listen to the I told you so’s.

 

When I got home Zero was already there looking at an assortment of mockup ads for products he’d agreed to endorse. There was energy water, protein bars, underwear, laundry detergent, beard trimmers, anything and everything. He’d signed up to sell it all. I tried to think if I’d ever heard him say no to any of the deals. He acted like he was afraid that at any moment all of the money would dry up. "Got a deal for another million today." he said proudly.

I sat down next to him on the couch. "Congratulations. What for?" I almost didn’t want to know. He put the product pamphlet in my hand. Images of bright white teeth and rainbows were all over the page. "Toothpaste?"

"Everyone needs it." He leaned back and looked proud of himself. I set down the ad with the others. "Tomorrow I’m supposed to meet with some reps about a body spray campaign. That’ll be another couple hundred."

I cringed inwardly. "Don’t you think you should be a little pickier about what you sign up for? The way you talk about all of this makes it seem like you’re only in it for the money. You don’t sound sincere." I looked away from him.

"Do you think I’m faking this?" he demanded.

"No," I said it firmly so he wouldn’t think I was weaseling out of it. "But other people do."

"Like Lionel. I don’t think she likes me very much."

"What?" I hadn’t talked to Lionel for days. She’d forwarded me emails and sent me text messages but they had all been about the Devils, nothing personal. "When did you see her?"

"At the party." He didn’t say anything else but he looked uncomfortable.

I was surprised. I hadn’t seen her. Normally she’d at least let me know she was there. Obviously she’d had something to say to Zero. She’d probably been trying to protect me. I hadn’t been able to talk to her in person since the kiss. She’d made her opinion of Zero pretty clear then. Maybe that’s what all this looked like to people on the outside-a desperate attempt to piss off my dad for attention.

"Lionel’s my friend. She’s just being overprotective." I made a mental note to call her later. "I’m sure if she got to know you better she’d be ok with it."

Zero’s face was a maze of trapped emotion. Maybe I shouldn’t have told him I wanted Lionel to get to know him. The way he acted with me seemed like something he wanted to keep between the two of us. In the beginning I’d been okay with it because he wouldn’t agree to anything else. Now that everyone knew about us it was annoying feeling like I had to defend being with him to all of the people who thought he was an arrogant asshole. I waited for him to pull away but he stayed sitting next to me.

"Do you think people aren’t going to like you if they know who you are? Do you think things are going to change that much?" I wished I had some idea what exactly he was so ashamed of. The more he avoided it the worse it became in my mind. I was sure no matter what it was it couldn’t have been as bad as half of the things I imagined.

The expression on his face said it all. He thought it would ruin everything.

I reached out and took his hand. We usually didn’t hug or do anything demonstrative unless we were having sex. Then nothing was too much. This time he grabbed hold of me like he was afraid I was going to disappear. We stayed like that for a while. "Whatever it is it’s not going to change how I feel about you," I said.

Zero closed his eyes. "I know. It doesn’t make it any easier."

I cleared my throat. "Then do you think we could go to the house tomorrow? The sooner we go the sooner you’ll see it’s not going to change anything between us." I squeezed his hand reassuringly. "I don’t have anything going on at the arena. Your meeting with the reps won’t take all day."

He bit his lip and shook his head. "Pete scheduled an extra practice and I’ve got an interview." His hand slid out of mine and he headed into the bedroom. "I’ve gotta get to bed."

 

Lionel was actually in her office when I went to the arena the next day. She barely looked up when I went inside. I hadn’t seen her since she’d managed to get the Devils back in the arena. Now she looked like all of the stress of keeping things running had finally caught up to her. There were dark circles under her eyes that were only barely covered with makeup. "Jude, nice of you to show up," she said. "Do you have those numbers I asked you for?" I had no idea what she was talking about and I don’t think she did either.

I sat down in one of the chairs facing her desk. "No, but I’ll have them to you by the end of the day." She muttered something under her breath about having to do everything herself. I’d never seen her this disorganized before. "Where’ve you been anyway? I haven’t seen you in days."

"A friend of mine was in town. I stayed with him on his boat." There was something wistful about her answer. She stared out the window.

"Are you okay? I can handle things here if you want to take a couple of days off." I didn’t think she’d accept my offer.

Lionel glared at me. She gestured to the papers that she’d spread all over her desk. "And leave all of this up in the air? By the time I got back Jelena and Terrence would have found some way to own the team." She leaned back in her chair. "I can barely go home at night without the place falling apart." Right now it looked like she lived in the office.

I couldn’t really argue with her. It seemed like every week something different happened that had a chance of ruining everything. Oscar had made it look easy. Instead I changed the subject."Were you at Zero’s party the other night? I didn’t see you."

Instantly the weariness left her face and she sat up straighter. "I didn’t stay very long. You were busy and I didn’t want to bother you," she said. That hadn’t stopped her before. Sometimes I thought Lionel loved being able to jump into other people’s conversations. Especially when she had a chance to seize the spotlight.

"But you talked to Zero."

Her eyes narrowed. "I did."

I waited for her to say something else but it didn’t seem like she was going to. "I’m sorry I didn’t tell you about us. It was kind of a surprise to me too."

"So he’s the guy you were talking about before." She tapped a pen on her desk. "The one you went away for four months to get over?"

I couldn’t help flinching. I’d forgotten I’d told her any of that. Those months were ones I wasn’t in any hurry to relive. At the beginning I’d jumped at every phone call hoping it was him. I’d thrown myself into working for the clients I still had left in a desperate attempt to distract myself. She’d stayed in touch even though I knew she was busy. It helped with the crushing loneliness. Then when she offered me the job with the Devils she gave me a taste of what I had always wanted. Oscar never would have done it. He would have been content to string me along until the day he died. After those months of deprivation I knew I didn’t want to settle for the next best thing. I wanted it all and I was going to get it. And slowly but surely I was succeeding.

"I needed to get away to find out what I really wanted. I’m not going to be anyone’s secret again." While the words were strong I’m not sure I convinced her. A few weeks ago I wouldn’t have been able to convince myself. Lionel was looking at me like she wanted to believe me. And I wanted her to. She was one of the few people I considered a real friend and it actually mattered that she knew the truth. I didn’t care so much if everyone else did. "This isn’t just a publicity stunt. This is real. He’s not who you think he is."

Lionel smiled sadly. "I hope you’re right. Sometimes I worry about you."

I didn’t want to argue with her. She wouldn’t understand unless she saw it. "Look, if you can’t take a day off maybe we could go out to dinner. I’ll bring Zero, you can bring your friend. It won’t hurt if you’re not here for a few hours."

Her phone vibrated on the desk. Instantly a heavy weight fell on her shoulders. She picked it up and sighed. "Jude once things calm down I might take you up on your offer. This place is poison."

 

Zero wasn’t at my apartment when I got home that night. I wondered if I’d finally pushed him away by wanting to know more about him. It was sad that all he wanted people to know was this constructed image he’d made of himself. I wasn’t sure how much longer that image would stand. His biographer had been just the start. Once he’d seen how reluctant Zero was to talk about his past I’m sure he knew there was a story there. It was only a matter of time until he or someone else told it. I wanted to help Zero but unless I knew what he was so desperate to hide there wasn’t much I could do. I could still see his look of desperation as he signaled me at the party to change the subject.

I went through my mail. There wasn’t anything all that interesting except for a few magazines. It was surreal seeing my face on one magazine cover, let alone all the covers that kept coming out day after day. There weren’t any pictures of Zero and me together except for the one from his Instagram. Half of the time they didn’t spell my name right or even mention it at all. I probably should have been grateful no one was lurking around waiting to take pictures of me and expose all of my secrets. Zero had to deal with it all the time. I almost wanted a big scandal to happen to someone else so that things would finally calm down and we could move on.

I kept on thinking back to the way he’d said no when I asked him if he could have a normal relationship. A part of me was worried that one day he’d decide that all of this was too much work and he’d break up with me and move on to his next identity. It wouldn’t be that hard to go back to being a born again Christian and forget that all of this had ever happened. The only thing that kept those thoughts at bay was that after he’d kissed me in front of everyone he hadn’t denied any of it. He hadn’t walked away.

Today had been draining in so many ways that I hadn’t expected. I was worried about Lionel and I was worried about Zero. It felt like something was going to explode at any moment and there was no telling what would happen next. Either Lionel was going to snap or Zero was. I didn’t know how to help Lionel right now, but Zero was a different story. Maybe if he told me about his past some of the things that were holding him back from being himself would go away.

I went into my bedroom, undressed, and went to bed. There weren’t any messages from Zero and I didn’t feel like waiting up for him.

 

Zero came in a few hours later trying to be quiet but not doing a very good job. He bumped into the side table and swore to himself. I turned on the light. He looked at me sheepishly. "Sorry, they wanted to take me out to drinks to seal the deal," he said. I watched as he stripped down to his boxers and got into bed next to me.

"It’s okay, I wasn’t sleeping." I said.

He glanced over at me. "What’s wrong?" One of the many things that I loved about him was he’d actually ask the hard questions and listen to the answers. He wasn’t just being polite. Right now he was the only one.

"I saw Lionel today. She looked pretty rough. I think all this shit with the League and Jelena and Terrence is getting to her. I told her we all had to go out to dinner together sometime." I rubbed at my eyes. "How’d your interview go?"

He rolled his eyes and sank down into the pillows. "It was with some sports magazine I’ve never heard of. I thought they wanted to talk basketball but all they wanted to hear about was my childhood. I don’t get why that’s all anyone wants to know. I have two championship rings, I’m one of the best players in the league, and all anyone wants to talk about is how I grew up. It’s fucked up." He had curled his hands into fists.

"People want to have a story to cling to. It’s not enough that you made it, they want to see how you did it. That way they can believe they can do it too."

"I wish they’d pick someone else." Zero snapped. He turned so he was facing away from me. His back was tensed like he wanted to run or fight. I turned out the light. Right then there wasn’t any point in pushing it.

As time passed neither of us had fallen asleep and it didn’t seem like we would anytime soon. I decided to try again. Maybe I’d regret it. "I know all of this bothers you. All I want to do is help. Maybe if you talk about it things will get better."

Zero didn’t say anything. I sat up and turned to face him. He was staring at a point on the wall like it was the most interesting thing ever.

"You said you’d tell me. You don’t have to tell anyone else if you don’t want to. We can come up with something to tell them that’ll get them off your back. But I can’t do that unless you let me know what really happened."

Still nothing.

"I said I’m not going to leave you and I meant it. We’re in this together." His shoulders relaxed a little bit and he glanced at me quickly before resuming staring at the wall. I grabbed his shoulder and pushed him onto his back. When I kissed him he was surprised at first but soon relaxed. After I pulled away he had a faint smile on his face.

"How can I argue with that?" he asked.

"So you’ll go?"

"Yeah. We can go tomorrow." I tried not to get my hopes up. There were still plenty of opportunities for him to change his mind. This was a start.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This work assumes that Laura is older than Zero.

2.

The house Zero had grown up in turned out to be somehow even worse than what I’d imagined. Looking at a picture didn’t properly convey how everything smelled. When I walked inside it was all I could to do avoid gagging. Something had died here and burrowed its way into the walls. And that was just the living room. I couldn’t imagine what the bathroom or the kitchen would be like. Everything was a depressing shade of brown. Even opening the windows didn’t help. It only made the room heat up to the point where it was like I was standing in a furnace. It was a long way off from my childhood home where everything was gleaming white and temperature controlled.

Zero walked in as if none of this bothered him at all and dropped his jacket on the sagging couch in the middle of the room. He stared at me like he was daring me to say something. Finally he gestured at the room in irritation. "This is where I grew up," he said. "Take a good look."

I had no response. He’d seen where I grew up. There was no love in either house.

 

I gave him plenty of space to tell the story of what it had been like to grow up here. It felt like I owed him that much. He’d given me bits and pieces over the time we’d spent together, but none of it meshed together to make anything whole. It turned out he’d left a lot out or simply glossed over it. I didn’t understand how after all the time I’d known him he’d never mentioned anything about having a sister. He was so blase about all of it, like none of it had made any impact on him. Perhaps that was what let me know how much it really had. He’d created a character that pressed him down until he couldn’t spontaneously show emotion anymore. Otherwise it was too risky. That had to change.

When I’d brought the sledgehammer I hadn’t really expected anything to come of it. Beating the hell out of things always seemed like it worked in movies to get someone to come out of their shell. I had a feeling it might work with Zero. The way he’d been acting recently with the reporters and at the spa made it seem like deep down he might have had a short temper with a violent streak. I was impressed he’d been able to keep it under control for so long. Still that didn’t mean he’d rise to the bait. He’d had years to learn how to hide how he truly felt. This couldn’t have been the first time that control had been tested. Once I handed the sledgehammer to him I stepped back. He hefted it and tested out its weight but made no move to do anything other than hold it. He needed encouragement. I gave it to him.

When Zero had destroyed pretty much everything in the room I decided to step in. For all the time we’d spent touching each other we’d never really hugged or held each other. I tried to grab hold of him as best I could. My movements were uncoordinated and awkward, but eventually I had hold of him from behind. He could have broken free at any time and continued to smash everything in the house. Instead his anger twisted and before I knew it he was crying in my arms. That he’d let himself be vulnerable with me, if even for a moment, spoke volumes. I wondered if he’d really been able to do that with anyone before.

The walls went right back up after the tears dried. Zero slowly moved his hand away from where it rested on my arm. He waited patiently until I let go of him. I did so reluctantly, my arms sliding off of him and back to my sides. He didn’t look at me until he’d put a few steps between us. I figured he was embarrassed that I’d seen so much of him. He grabbed his jacket off the remains of the couch. "We don’t have to stay here, do we?" he asked, but he said it like a statement. His voice was neutral. If I hadn’t just been holding him while he cried I would have thought nothing had happened.

"That depends. Is there anything else I should know?" I asked. "Is there anything that I should see?" I didn’t think he’d tell me anything else but I had to try. If I knew anything about Zero by now there was always something else. No matter how many layers were peeled back there was always something underneath that he kept to himself.

He shrugged. "You can go look if you want. All that’s back there is the bathroom, the girls’ room, and Leo and Carla’s room. We weren’t allowed in there." I made my way down the hallway to the other rooms. The only room I really wasn’t interested in was the bathroom and that was easily avoided. The stench permeated the hallway. Someone must have been squatting here after the water got turned off.

The girls’ room was as depressing as the living room. Most of the furniture had been cleared out or laid in broken pieces on the floor. At one point there might have been bunk beds. A pile of dirty rags sat in one of the corners. It was impossible to tell how long they had been there. The same wood paneling that was in the rest of the house continued through here. There was a small window set up high on the wall that barely let in any light. Someone had chipped their initials into one of the panels underneath a crying face. "Why did they get their own room but you had to sleep in the living room?" I asked. It was a stupid question.

"They couldn’t keep us otherwise. I’m sure if they could have they would have crammed all of us in here." Zero was getting antsy again. I could tell all he wanted to do was leave and go somewhere far away from all of this. We weren’t done yet. There was only one room left.

The door might have locked at one point but someone had broken it. Inside was a room unlike any other in the house. While the furniture had been damaged by whoever had broken the door it was clear that at one point someone had cared about the things inside. Everything outside could have gone to hell but this was different. A broken air conditioner sat in the window. The door to the master bathroom was sitting off its hinges propped against the wall. Shelves lined the walls. There were smashed porcelain figurines all over the floor. They crunched underneath my feet as I walked inside. If I closed my eyes I could imagine what it might have looked like before this. This must have been Leo and Carla’s refuge from the twelve foster kids they’d taken in. Zero stayed in the hallway looking like he was going to be sick. I pulled him inside. He let me. Once we were past the doorway he stood awkwardly like he had no idea what to do.

"We were never allowed in here. They always kept the door locked," Zero said finally. I picked up one of the porcelain pieces from the floor. It was part of a teddy bear. It smiled at me benignly before I dropped it back on the floor. "Carla collected those. Anything she made off scratch offs she used to buy that shit. Never on anything for us." He stepped on it deliberately and ground it into the carpet.

"Do you want me to get the sledgehammer?" I asked.

He shook his head. "I think we’re past that point Jude." He kicked a trail through the broken pieces and looked out the window. It looked out onto a rocky backyard filled with rocks and dirt the same shade of brown as everything in the house. When he turned back to me he let out a sigh that took most of his energy with it. "Do you know why I signed all those endorsement deals? Because I don’t want to wind up back here." I almost started to tell him that there was no way I’d let that happen, but the look on his face said that no matter what I said he wouldn’t have believed it. Whatever had happened here had etched itself on him.

It almost looked like Zero was going to start crying again. His jaw twitched as he stared out the window. I walked up next to him and put my arms around him. He let me, releasing some of the tension from his body.

 

As we left the road took us by the basketball courts he’d talked about. Weeds grew up through cracks in the concrete and the hoops were bent. There were a few bushes that might have provided shelter but otherwise the sun beat down relentlessly on the asphalt. "That’s where you slept?" I asked.

Zero shrugged. Once we’d gotten back in the car and started to leave the neighborhood he’d relaxed a little but he was still on guard like at any moment someone was going to notice him and not let him leave. He sat as low as he could in the passenger seat. "There used to be benches there." I could see holes in the pavement where they had been bolted down. "I used to play pick up games for money so I could get something to eat. Nobody ever came looking for me unless a social worker was coming."

I slowly drove past the court. "Did you have any friends?" I thought I could guess the answer but maybe he would surprise me.

"Laura," he said.

"What happened to her?" I asked.

Zero closed his eyes. "She left. Once she was old enough the checks stopped coming and they kicked her out."

"And you don’t know where she went?"

He shook his head violently. "No. She was going to get a job and get an apartment for us. She said she’d come back for me." He pointed to the steering wheel. I’m sure if he could have he would have pushed me out of the way and driven us far away from this. "Can we just go?"

I knew the chances of him answering more questions today were low. This was further than he’d been pushed in a while. Still I had to try. "Did you see her after she left?"

It took Zero a long time to answer. "We got in a big fight before she had to go. I got angry and said I never wanted to see her again." He smiled grimly. "I guess I got my wish."

I reached out and took his hand. "There had to have been some other reason why she didn’t. Maybe something happened to her." His facial expression barely changed. It was obvious he didn’t believe me. "It wasn’t your fault."

"Then why didn’t she come back?"

 

As days passed Zero fell back into his old routines and pretended things were like they had always been. If anything had changed it was only that I could see little pieces of himself fighting to break free. Once the dam had been broken the character he’d created for himself had started to wash away. He was still able to pull it together when he was out in public but once we were alone the mask fell. At night we’d go to bed together like we always had, though now sometimes he’d reach out for me and I for him. Instead of lying in bed next to each other we were actually with each other. There was something reassuring about that.

One night not long after we’d been to the house I woke up and Zero was gone. For a moment I almost thought he’d never been there at all, at least until I looked over and saw the indentation on the bed where he’d been. I got up and walked through my apartment looking for him. He wasn’t there. When I peeked through the window shades his car was gone.

At this point my mind started racing with possibilities. There were so many places he could have gone. The thing I clung to was the fact that ever since we’d kissed he hadn’t done anything that suggested he didn’t really want to be with me. What had happened at his house had only scratched the surface of who Zero was. He’d never shared so much of himself with anyone before. It terrified him. Even though he trusted me he acted like at any moment it could all end.

I sent him a text message asking him where he was. His phone vibrated on the night stand. He hadn’t taken it with him. There wasn’t anything I could do right now. I had to trust that there would be a good reason for all of this. I got back into bed planning to wait for him. Somehow even though I tried to stay awake I wound up falling asleep.

Zero was back in the morning when I woke up. He was asleep next to me like he’d been there the whole night. I was glad that whatever was so important he had to leave hadn’t meant that he wouldn’t come back. I leaned over and kissed him on the forehead before getting up and heading to the kitchen.

He joined me a few minutes later. I watched him slide into the seat across from me with a bowl of cereal. It was like any other morning between us. "Where did you go last night?" I asked him.

"The gym. I woke up and couldn’t get back to sleep," he said in between bites. He kept his eyes on the bowl in front of him.

"Are you doing alright? I know going to see your old house wasn’t easy."

"I’m fine. I just couldn’t sleep last night." He glanced up at me and smiled. "It’s okay Jude."

 

I believed him. Then it happened again. And again. When he was there in the morning I found him with his hands covered in bruises. I asked him over and over again what was wrong and he’d deflect my questions every time. Sometimes I’d wake up and find him packing his bag to go. He’d refused every time I asked to go with him. Whatever he was doing at the gym wasn’t lifting weights or running.

One day his hands were particularly bad. The skin on his knuckles was broken and scabbed over. I grabbed them before he could pretend it was nothing. "Maybe you should take a break from whatever you’re doing so you can heal. If you get injured you might be out for the season. And the Devils need you right now." Especially since the threat of a takeover was still a possibility.

He looked at them and acted like he was just now noticing anything was wrong. "Guess I don’t know my own strength," he said offhandedly.

"Are you doing this on purpose?" I asked finally. "Whatever it is that’s bothering you, you can tell me about it. You know that right?"

It took him a while to answer. That’s when I knew he was going to dodge the question again. I was going to have to do something else to find out what was going on.

 

That night I pretended to fall asleep. I think he really did fall asleep but he soon shot awake and tried to get out of bed as quietly as possible to avoid disturbing me. I waited until he went into the front room to quickly get dressed and sneak out after him.

It was fairly easy to follow his car. The roads were busy but a red car stuck out enough that I could follow him through the sea of white, black, and silver. He drove like he usually did, switching from lane to lane at almost breakneck speed. At first I didn’t realize where he was going. It wasn’t toward anywhere I might have expected. It wasn’t until the houses started to change that I figured it out. At night everything looked different. The abandoned houses looked more forbidding in the dark.

Zero had parked in front of his old house. I parked further down the street. He’d left a small light on inside the house. It shone through the gaps in the shutters. The neighborhood was completely deserted but even I knew the chances of that were pretty low. When I looked through a hole in the shutters I could see Zero moving around inside. He’d left the front door unlocked. I opened it slowly and stepped inside cautiously. The last thing I needed was for him to think I was someone breaking in.

The light he’d brought didn’t reveal much of anything except a small section of floor in the living room. The jagged pieces of furniture and wood paneling cast menacing shadows on the wall. Everything was pretty much as we had left it the other day. The only thing that was different was it didn’t smell so bad and there was a breeze.

I walked further inside. It was then that I realized that where there had been a wall before there was just open space. The blackness of the night sky felt like it would fill the room. When I went up to where the wall had been I could see the jagged edges where someone had knocked it out into the backyard.

Zero wasn’t in here. I heard banging noises and curses from down the hallway near the other rooms. When I got to Leo and Carla’s room I found Zero standing in the middle of a pile of broken furniture. What hadn’t been broken before was completely destroyed now. He’d smashed the windows and knocked out the brick holding the frame together. I hoped he knew what he was doing. He was holding a splintered piece of wood in his bloody hands. A sledgehammer and other tools sat around the room.

"Zero?" I asked.

He turned to face me. There was a momentary flicker of anger that was soon replaced with shock and embarrassment. "Jude? What are you doing here?"

I picked my way through the piles of rubble to get closer to him. "I was worried about you. I wanted to make sure you were okay." I side-stepped a broken shelf on the floor. "Didn’t think I’d find you here."

Zero didn’t say anything for a moment. I reached out for him. There was a nasty cut on the back of his hand. He let me hold it as the blood dried. "I kept thinking about this house," he said. "I couldn’t sleep knowing it was still here. So I decided to do something about it."

"They’re going to knock it down," I said.

Zero nodded. "I know. But I couldn’t wait that long."

"This is dangerous. What if one of the walls you knocked down was load-bearing? If something happened no one would know where you were." I looked up at the ceiling. Years of neglect had led to cracks that were obvious through the peeling paint. "We should get out of here."

He didn’t fight me as we walked out to the backyard. The bricks he’d knocked out were scattered around. "Why didn’t you tell me you were coming here?" I asked.

Zero sighed and sat down in the dirt. "I didn’t want you to worry about me."

I sat down next to him. There were still streetlights in the distance that gave off some light but it was almost impossible to see his face. "And this was better? I didn’t know where you were going. And you were getting hurt."

He put his arms around his knees. "Ever since I came back here I can’t keep it all in anymore. I can’t just laugh it all off like I used to."

Pieces started to fit together. "You thought you were going to scare me away?" I should have been angry. We’d been through this. Maybe he still couldn’t trust it. He’d had years of personal experience to prove me wrong.

"Everyone who knows me leaves. I’ve driven off everyone that’s ever meant anything to me," he said finally. "I didn’t want that to happen with you."

"If I can handle Oscar I think I can handle the real you, whoever that is," I said. "Your mom and your sister didn’t leave because of you." Zero’s profile was outlined by the light. It was impossible to tell if he believed me or not. I turned away. "Besides, you’re not the only one who scares everyone away. I wasn’t going to tell you but I went to see Oscar again. I still thought there was a chance he might want to get to know me." I shook my head. "He doesn’t."

"Then he doesn’t know what he’s missing out on," Zero said. He was staring at me intently. I could see light reflected in his eyes. Once he realized I was looking at him he turned away like he always did when he thought he’d revealed too much of himself.

My throat was tight. "You’re all I have, ok?" Zero looked at me again. His hand sought out mine in the dirt. I held on tightly. "At the beginning of all of this I wasn’t sure if we could even have a normal relationship. I don’t think anyone thought we could." I swallowed heavily. "But we are. I can’t think of anything you could tell me about yourself that would change that."

We sat in the backyard until the sky started to lighten and the sun rose.


End file.
